Alabama athletes' role in aiding desegregation shown on film

Sunday

Aug 25, 2013 at 12:01 AM

In the turbulent history of University of Alabama desegregation, names leap out: Wallace, of course, but also heroes such as Vivian Malone and James Hood, who registered for classes after the governor’s June 11, 1963, stand in the schoolhouse door collapsed to federal authority.

By Mark Hughes Cobb Staff Writer | The Tuscaloosa News

In the turbulent history of University of Alabama desegregation, names leap out: Wallace, of course, but also heroes such as Vivian Malone and James Hood, who registered for classes after the governor’s June 11, 1963, stand in the schoolhouse door collapsed to federal authority.Acceptance followed in part because of the success of African-American athletes, says Keith Dunnavant, a journalist whose “Three Days At Foster” documentary, premiering today at Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival and offered for streaming Monday, delves into the lives of well-known figures such as Wilbur Jackson, the first black signed by coach Paul W. “Bear” Bryant to play football for the Crimson Tide, and Wendell Hudson, UA’s first black scholarship athlete and basketball star.But the film also uncovers stories of lesser-known players in the drama, such as Danny Treadwell, who became the first black to play in the state basketball tournament at Foster, just 33 months after Wallace’s stand, and Dock Rone, Andrew Pernell and Arthur Dunning, who walked on to UA’s all-white football team in 1967.UA graduate Dunnavant has written five books, including “Coach,” about Bryant, and “The Missing Ring,” around the 1966 Tide football team, and so has touched on tales of UA sports and its integration before. But he felt the documentary film would work best for the stories of these men, all of whom are interviewed, along with dozens more.“I try to do in-depth journalism. This is not something sensational. It’s coming from the standpoint of the historian, trying to make sense of what really was a very difficult period, and how Alabama came out of that,” said Dunnavant, who’ll be in Birmingham today for an 11 a.m. discussion panel prior to the 2 p.m. showing of “Three Days at Foster” at First United Methodist Church. “We talk a lot about (George) Wallace, but in the end, I think people will be moved by what these young men went through, and hopefully they will have a new appreciation for how Alabama football, the love of sports in general, but Alabama football particularly, helped bring the state together. That’s a major theme of the film,” he said.The seed for the documentary came from a magazine feature Dunnavant wrote on Jackson in 1999.“I spent a little time with him down in Ozark,” he said. “(Jackson) was one of my favorite players when I was a kid.“He told me about a moment, something that had happened to him on a trip to the university, just a few months earlier, with his daughter. ... It just hit me like a ton of bricks. It really got me thinking about doing something on the subject.“Sometimes you get a story that’s hard to get out of your head. This was kind of that story for me.”Dunnavant had worked on one documentary film previously, though it’s yet to be released. Following a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund part of “Three Days” — the rest came from Dunnavant’s pocket — he assembled a small team in the spring of 2012, including director of photography Jonathan Hickman and editor Joe Beamon. They shot interviews last fall, Dunnavant wrote the film over the winter, and his team has been in post-production since. “Three Days at Foster” contains some archival footage, but is composed mostly of interviews, 42 in all, in a film that runs an hour and 20 minutes.“There’s a lot of people, and about five major story lines,” Dunnavant said, including Pat Dye, who was a UA assistant coach in the early ’70s, Jackson himself, Hudson and the walk-ons.“The pioneer athletes have never gotten their due at the University of Alabama,” he said. Many have heard the apocryphal story of how Bryant decided to integrate the team after Sam Cunningham from the University of Southern California ran all over UA’s defense in a September 1970 game. But the real story is more complex. Jackson had already been signed to play for the Tide, and in fact was sitting in the stands at the USC game.“It was powerful symbolism, clearly a clash between the past and the future,” Dunnavant said. “But Bryant had already integrated the team. Wilbur Jackson had been signed seven or eight months before that.”In the film, Jackson recalls what it was like struggling not only to live up to the famously tough standards of the coach, but “being the Jackie Robinson of the Alabama team.”Rone, Pernell and Dunning had never been interviewed before, Dunnavant said, but provided another strong story line. Rone attended UA as an engineering student at a time when fewer than 300 black students were on campus. “During the ’66 ‘Missing Ring’ season, Alabama’s getting flack for being segregated still,” he said. As a high school player, Rone had been recruited for some schools, mostly traditionally black colleges. “So he’s thinking ‘Man, I’d like to see if I could play with these guys.’ ”Rone details going to see Bryant, sinking down into the famous couch, deep and soft so visitors would sit far lower than the coach.“He didn’t know how Bryant would react,” Dunnavant said, but was pleasantly surprised to find the coach encouraging, going so far as to say he admired Rone’s courage. In the next few days, four more black students walked on. Rone and Pernell made it as far as the spring game, but neither made the cut for fall.“These guys are mostly in their 60s, so we were fortunate that we could get to them, and that they would share their stories for the first time, essentially,” Dunnavant said. “We had a time cutting this down to an hour and 20.”For those who can’t make today’s showing, “Three Days At Foster” will be available beginning Monday as streaming Vimeo on demand, for $4.95, through the website www.threedaysatfoster.com.“It just felt like it was time for a major sports documentary to be released in this way,” Dunnavant said. “This offers so much efficiency and portability for the average Alabama fan, making it available to the maximum amount of people.”Plans are to release it on DVD, later in the year, as well.